Sunday Downtime - All Evolve Media Sites are being migrated to a new data center Sunday Dec 11, 2016. The migration will occur during an 8 AM to 2 PM (Pacific Time) maintenance window. We will have up to 1 hour of downtime for any of our sites.

Brian Burke-President of Hockey Operations for the Calgary Flames

December of this year will be 4 years....the end of this season will be almost 5 years as I stated. It looks to be over 5 years before this team is a legit playoff team based on the current trajectory.

Only in the world of Oilers management and apologist Oiler fans (not saying you are) does it take that long to be a bubble playoff team.

Being a bubble playoff team isn't the goal, though. Anyone can do it, including Kevin Lowe - who did it for many years.

Quote:

I think MacT can speed that up and I also think that had he been in the GM chair since the beginning the team would likely be better than it is right now. MacT is the only saving grace on this Management team IMO. I just dont know if he alone can off set the sheer amount of incompetence that currently exists.

I am willing to bet the Flames do it a lot quicker than the Oilers will.

I'm not sold that either team will even do it at all.

It's easy to call a spade a spade on a bad move when you live with the consequences as a fan. When you don't, it's easier to miss. Feaster has ****ed the dog on almost everything he's done - and this includes massive contracts for mediocre players, NTC's and NMC's, and what I think is legitimately the worst line-up since the Oilers in 2009-2010.

One thing I'll say is that Burke is a man of action. He'll make a dozen moves, some will work out - others will fail. My worry is that he and Feaster, who have trashed the rebuild route, will attempt to forego it entirely.

Again, I'm not sure why some Oilers fans are crowing about this. Will the Flames struggle? Maybe. But I'll bet that Burke helps them become good enough to finish ahead of us in the standings in very short order. That kind of "success" is just fine with most Flames fans, hell, their media would be satisfied with that.

Even putting that aside he was 25-8-7 in his final year as a Blackhawk and he got the hawks to the WCF. Was the team a good one? Absolutely. But those are still starters numbers. Never mind he played more playoff games than Huet.

Good grief...since when is starting 40 out of 82 games considered starter numbers? Starting approx half the games may be good enough for your criteria but not mine.

Quote:

Again the term and $ were a bit much, but looking at how much today's starters are getting paid...

It wasnt just the $ and term that were ridiculous...it was this decision to completely ignore Khabbys injury history and think that he would magically stop being injured. Aside from 1 year with the Hawks he had not been a reliable starter since his Tampa Bay days and that was a long time ago.

Kevin Lowe, whether or not he'll succeed or fail, doesn't have that modest goal.

Hasn't been the target for years.

By most accounts the goal was to be a playoff team last year opposed to being a borderline lottery club.

Sidenote: Sorry, this Burke hiring has made me super cynical. I'm not convinced that he's a great hockey mind but based on the kinds of players that he covets and loves my gut tells me that the Flames are going to be pushing the Oilers around... regardless of their lack of "skill." I'm still having nightmares about that last game between the Oilers and Flames from last season. Their ECHL players bullied our guys.

Being a bubble playoff team isn't the goal, though. Anyone can do it, including Kevin Lowe - who did it for many years.

I agree that it is not the goal...unfortunately it is the reality.

Quote:

I'm not sold that either team will even do it at all.

It's easy to call a spade a spade on a bad move when you live with the consequences as a fan. When you don't, it's easier to miss. Feaster has ****ed the dog on almost everything he's done - and this includes massive contracts for mediocre players, NTC's and NMC's, and what I think is legitimately the worst line-up since the Oilers in 2009-2010.

One thing I'll say is that Burke is a man of action. He'll make a dozen moves, some will work out - others will fail. My worry is that he and Feaster, who have trashed the rebuild route, will attempt to forego it entirely.

We shall see....time will tell.

I just dont understand why Oiler fans are celebrating this signing as a positive for the Oiler org.

Maybe when this team can get out of the way from its own incompetence we can start looking down at other teams and their management.

By most accounts the goal was to be a playoff team last year opposed to being a borderline lottery club.

Sidenote: Sorry, this Burke hiring has made me super cynical. I'm not convinced that he's a great hockey mind but based on the kinds of players that he covets and loves my gut tells me that the Flames are going to be pushing the Oilers around... regardless of their lack of "skill." I'm still having nightmares about that last game between the Oilers and Flames from last season. Their ECHL players bullied our guys.

I think he has a great hockey mind, he just gets a little stupid at times which hurts him overall.

Again, I'm not sure why some Oilers fans are crowing about this. Will the Flames struggle? Maybe. But I'll bet that Burke helps them become good enough to finish ahead of us in the standings in very short order. That kind of "success" is just fine with most Flames fans, hell, their media would be satisfied with that.

We shall see. I would be on board with your line of thinking re: this Burke hire if Tambellini were still here doing his never ending "assessment". But he's gone, and MacTavish is here in his place. He isn't perfect, but then nobody is.

Assuming that Burke inevitably does take over the GM reins in Calgary, IMO it's going to be fun to watch him and MacT try to out-bold each other.

By most accounts the goal was to be a playoff team last year opposed to being a borderline lottery club.

Sidenote: Sorry, this Burke hiring has made me super cynical. I'm not convinced that he's a great hockey mind but based on the kinds of players that he covets and loves my gut tells me that the Flames are going to be pushing the Oilers around... regardless of their lack of "skill." I'm still having nightmares about that last game between the Oilers and Flames from last season. Their ECHL players bullied our guys.

I think its a virtual guarantee that the Flames will have better balance than the Oilers. Their top 3 lines will not have the lack of grit and toughness the Oilers top 3 has.

If the Oilers had wished to avoid the rebuild as the Flames have done (and others have done), it would only be easy. They did it for years previously.

People forget that the 08/09 team was in a playoff spot in the last month of the season. They choked it away. It wasn't a bottom feeder, it was a mediocre bubble team.

That was a bad team that managed to stay in the playoff race because of a couple of players that had good years (Hemsky, Horcoff to a lesser extent), a great year from Souray, and Roloson standing on his head night after night, finishing with a .915 save percentage. IIRC, that was the same year where Roli played something like 30 straight games to end the season because the team had no chance to win unless he outplayed everyone else that night. It was the same year when Cherry showed highlights of Roloson on Coach's Corner, saying something like, "This guy is doing incredible things right now, and I want you people in the East that don't get to watch the Oilers to see this."

I've always believed great goaltending can mask numerous holes on a team, and I would say the Oilers just that in 08/09. Without Roloson playing out of his mind IMO they easily would have been a lottery team that year.

You seem to be seeing what you want to see. Nowhere in that article does it mention that Blackhawk management considered Khabby a starting goalie.

No you're right. The Blackhawks were going to bring back Khabibulin to backup the guy he beat out for the starting job the previous season. Nevermind that Huet was so bad he lost the starting job in 2009-10 to a rookie and then was loaned to the Swiss league because no one in the NHL wanted to touch his contract.

We shall see. I would be on board with your line of thinking re: this Burke hire if Tambellini were still here doing his never ending "assessment". But he's gone, and MacTavish is here in his place. He isn't perfect, but then nobody is.

Assuming that Burke inevitably does take over the GM reins in Calgary, IMO it's going to be fun to watch him and MacT try to out-bold each other.

I just dont understand why Oiler fans are celebrating this signing as a positive for the Oiler org.

Maybe when this team can get out of the way from its own incompetence we can start looking down at other teams and their management.

Exactly. Oiler fans are in no position to crow about anything and look down on other organizations after one of the worst 4 year stretches in sports history.
The foundation for future success looks great but until the on ice results show it out, Oiler fans shouldn't be laughing at any organization.

With that being said, Calgary has a long, bumpy road ahead even with Burke in the fold. They have some very nice forward prospects and I'm a huge fan of Monahan but as of now, it's looking like it's going to be at least several years of heartache for Flames fans before the ship gets righted. They just don't have the trade pieces outside of the 1st rounder (similar to the '09-'10 Oilers) to do a quick rebuild and will have to depend on their homegrown talent to start maturing.

Maybe maybe not. In either case, there wasn't a full season so hypotheticals don't matter.

Its not that hypothetical when the team consistently gets out shot and out chanced virtually every game.
Its a trend that pointed to that fact this was not even close to a playoff team and would have been exposed much sooner in an 82 game season.

I suspect it was in part due to systems but in any event the Oilers were the worst team in the NHL in terms of their ability to control games.